Lava and Volcanic Eruption as a Symbol in Lies and Weddings

Introduction

In Lies and Weddings, the Hawaiian setting is more than a glamorous backdrop—it is a seismic stage where the literal earth cracks open, spewing lava that destroys a luxury resort and unravels a family’s fortune. Lava and volcanic eruption function as a concrete symbol for the buried rage, ruthless ambition, and suppressed truths that simmer beneath the Greshams’ glittering surface. The motif recurs at key moments, linking Augusta’s visceral expulsion of fury, Arabella’s status-climbing excess, and the hidden identity of Eden’s uncle to a single, destructive force. This analysis traces the symbol from its geological reality to its shifting narrative meanings, connecting it to characters and major themes such as wealth as destruction, maternal control, and hidden identities.

The Literal Lava: Geological Reality and Plot Disruption

The symbol first appears not as metaphor but as a concrete event early in the novel. Arabella, the Countess of Greshamsbury, watches a high‑resolution video sent to her in the middle of the night: “lava shooting out of the cliffside like a geyser.” She learns that a volcanic fissure has opened “right in the middle of the garden where Augusta’s wedding ceremony is supposed to be.” The Balinese pavilion, the replica bar, and the checkerboard‑floor ballroom are ruined. This fissure, erupting at the Bellaloha resort on the Big Island, is a real‑world geological event that shatters Arabella’s meticulously planned spectacle. The eruption is later linked to the volcanic terrain of Mauna Kea, where the family holds a Winter Ball inside an ice palace. At that ball, Gopal Das warns that the party offends the Hawaiian gods: “We have made Pele angry, and mark my words, there will be a price to pay.” The sacred mountain, Mauna a Wakea, is “the place where Wakea, the sky god, communed with Papa Hanau Moku, the earth goddess, leading to the creation of these islands.” The literal lava thus emerges from the land itself, a consequence of human arrogance and disregard for sacred ground.

Recurrence and Shifting Meaning

The image of volcanic eruption permeates the narrative, evolving from a distant news clip to a visceral force that mirrors emotional and social turmoil.

• Early warning: Arabella’s video transforms the distant volcano into an immediate personal catastrophe. Her hyperbolic reaction—claiming a transient ischemic stroke—shows her self‑absorption, but the fissure is undeniably real. It threatens the wedding that represents her lifetime of social climbing, introducing the symbol as a direct threat to her ambitions.

• Sound bath as eruption: In a crucial scene, Gopal Das guides Augusta through a therapy exercise to release a “hot ball of fury.” As she visualizes the ball leaving her body, the ground literally cracks behind her and smoke rises with a sulfuric smell. The text explicitly states “Gopal Das saw that the ground behind Augie was literally cracking open with smoke.” This moment fuses psychological state with geological event: Augusta’s repressed rage, born of maternal pressure and personal frustration, erupts through the earth. The lava symbol now becomes an externalization of buried emotion.

• The cosmic warning: At the Winter Ball, Gopal Das’s prophecy about Pele’s anger shifts the meaning again, framing the eruption as retribution for cultural disrespect. The ice palace, built on a sacred volcano, is an act of hubris. Here, lava is not just a natural disaster but a moral corrective, punishing the family’s performative status and colonial‑era insensitivity.

• The final rupture: Although the volcanic fissure initially destroys only the wedding site, its ultimate consequence is the collapse of the Gresham fortune. When Eden inherits the $90 billion MET Trust and control over Lord Gresham’s promissory notes, the financial lava consumes Arabella’s world. The suppressed truth—Roger Gao’s true identity as Rene Tan and the secret trust—has been simmering for decades, just like a magma chamber. The revelation erupts, and Arabella faints before commanding Eden to marry Rufus. The lava symbol, which began as a physical crack in the ground, now encompasses the complete destruction of a carefully constructed aristocratic façade.

Character and Theme Connections

The lava motif is deeply entangled with individual character arcs and the novel’s central themes.

• Arabella’s social climbing: Every detail of the Hawaii wedding—from the ice palace to the couture gowns—reflects Arabella’s relentless pursuit of status. The lava fissure that devours her wedding garden is a direct consequence of building a resort on sacred land, ignoring Gopal Das’s warnings. Her obsession with performative status literally cracks the earth open. The eruption mocks her belief that “any problem can be solved by throwing money at it,” as Rufus snarkily observes.

• Augusta’s buried rage: The sound bath scene ties Augusta’s personal fury to the volcanic symbol. Arabella’s controlling nature and the family’s emotional repression have forced Augusta to internalize her anger. The “hot ball of rage” she expels is the human equivalent of lava; when it escapes, the earth responds in kind. This connection highlights the theme of maternal control and generational trauma.

• Rufus’s moral unease: Unlike his mother, Rufus voices discomfort with the Mauna Kea party: “Everything about this is wrong. This ice palace was supposed to be half the size and built at the resort, not up here. Its presence here is an insult to Hawaiians and to all the activists who have been fighting so hard to block the construction of a new telescope on the mountain.” His awareness positions lava as a symbol of Nature’s judgment on unethical privilege.

• Eden and hidden truth: The lava that destroys the Gresham fortune ultimately clears the path for Eden’s inheritance to surface. Roger/Rene Tan, hidden for decades, is the molten secret that finally erupts, reshaping the emotional and financial landscape. The symbol thus links directly to the theme of hidden identities and family secrets.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does Augusta’s sound bath session with Gopal Das prefigure the volcanic fissure that later destroys the Bellaloha resort?
   During the session, Augusta visualizes expelling a “hot ball of fury” from her body, and immediately afterward Gopal Das sees the ground behind her cracking open and emitting smoke with a sulfuric smell. This moment literalizes Augusta’s suppressed anger as a volcanic event, suggesting that the same inner pressure later erupts physically at the wedding site. It establishes a direct link between emotional repression and geological destruction.

2. What does Gopal Das’s warning about angering Pele reveal about the Gresham family’s attitude toward the Hawaiian setting?
   He tells the party guests that Mauna Kea is a sacred place, a “grave offense to the gods,” and that “we have made Pele angry.” The family’s decision to build an ice palace there, ignoring local spiritual beliefs, demonstrates their prioritization of spectacle and status over cultural respect. The warning underscores that the lava is not random but a consequence of Arabella’s arrogant use of the land for a performative wedding.

3. In what way does the lava fissure symbolize Arabella’s social climbing ambitions?
   Arabella has invested immense resources in the Hawaii wedding to cement her status among European royalty and billionaires. The fissure that opens precisely where the ceremony was to be held destroys those ambitions in a single night. The lava literally engulfs the symbols of her status—the Balinese pavilion, the designer interiors—mirroring how her obsessive pursuit of status breeds its own destruction.

4. How is the eruption connected to the family’s deeper financial and emotional secrets?
   The lava fissure foreshadows the revelation that the Greshams are penniless and that Eden’s uncle Roger has secretly amassed a $90 billion empire. Just as the volcanic fissure ruptures the resort’s surface, the truth about Roger/Rene Tan and the promissory notes ruptures the family’s social standing. The lava, therefore, symbolizes the suppressed truths that eventually consume the Greshams’ carefully constructed world.